Livingstone has been accompanied by a large delegation on the trip, including London 2012 chairman Sebastian Coe and chief executive Paul Deighton. More than 50 business executives are also on the trip, as is the chief executive of Chelsea Football Club, Peter Kenyon. The visit is aimed at boosting ties between the two cities as they prepare to host the 2008 and 2012 Olympics respectively. Bureaucrats

“My purpose in Beijing is clearly to see what we can learn from the way Beijing has prepared for the Olympic Games,” said Livingstone. “But also it’s much more than that. We want to try and build very strong links between London and Beijing.”

While London could learn from Beijing's efforts to organise the Olympics, the British capital could teach the Chinese how to regulate traffic better, he said. “We have very good experience in London with the congestion charge, which has cut the number of people coming in to central London,” he said, adding that carbon pollution was down by 20 percent as a result.

When asked what he thought of visiting Tiananmen Square, scene of a democracy movement that was brutally suppressed in 1989, he said no country had a completely clean record. “In the same way that Trafalgar Square has had an interesting history in the past, not always a peaceful one, there’s a very clear parallel,” he said.